we weren't made to die in this dirt
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: Heroes died young, and Ron was a hero. Fred lives!AU, for Wren.


I probably played around a little with the timeline. Let's just assume that the diadem is no longer a concern and is not mentioned there because it didn't matter for this story.

 **we weren't made to die in this dirt**

' _I didn't want him to be a hero. I wanted him to be my husband.' – Caitlin Snow_

It all seemed so unreal. Once moment she and Ron were sneaking into the Chamber of Secrets to get Basilisk fangs and finally kissing, drunk on victory, and the next…

The next Ron was pushing Fred out of the way as the ceiling caved on him, his brothers' faces frozen in horrified denial the last thing he would ever see.

Someone screamed, and it took Hermione seemingly some everlasting minutes to realize that it was her. Somehow she had gotten on her knees, crumbling down in a way far too reminiscent of the way the old stones around them just had.

She was trying to lift the heavy rocks with her bare hands in the vain hope of revealing Ron's face unmarred, his body unbroken, the same dumb smile he had given her just moments ago on his lips, a joke on the tip of his tongue about her thinking so little of him she thought such a mundane thing could bring him down _(but it had, her treacherous mind whispered as she choked back tears, trying to keep her vision unblurred)_ and laughing the whole experience off.

Her wand laid by her side on the ground, left without a care for the war waging on around them. It took Fred's hand on her shoulder, shaking her urgently while Percy watched their backs, to bring her out of her trance-like state.

She stood up, a great calm falling over her mind like a curtain would over a theater scene at the end of the story.

Her hands were shaking, she realized belatedly. The skin was broken in places and reddened everywhere it wasn't covered in dirt. Her fingers were bleeding, the nails broken and bent in unnatural ways _(she had left specks of blood on those rocks like a desperate offering to a cruel, deaf god, and Ron's body still laid undisturbed beneath them – it wasn't fair)_ , but she couldn't feel the pain.

It felt like whoever was experienced life wasn't her. No, not quite that. It felt like the woman standing his Hermione's body right then was a lesser version of her - a diluted version of her, one whose senses were slightly muffled, like there was a slight distance between her and the rest of the world.

"Come on Hermione, we need to get out of here," Fred told her, his eyes full of pity and grief, and Hermione let herself follow him.

He led her to the Great Hall, where bodies, some disfigured and other so undamaged they looked like they were simply sleeping, laid on the ground like the most grotesque open cemetery she had ever seen.

She stopped, blinked, and the world sharpened. It felt like something popped in her ears: suddenly she could see again, suddenly she could _feel_ again.

 _(she much preferred when she hadn't, because she couldn't imagine having to live another second with this aching hole in her chest where her heart had been, but her mind was still rational enough to tell her that it wouldn't have been a good thing, to stay numb like that)_

 _(for the first time, she really hated her mind)_

There were suddenly a hundred, no, a thousand words on the tip of her tongue, begging to be let out. Pleas, bargains, denials… She yearned to express even just a single one of them, but came out instead was this.

"Where's my wand?"

"Here," Fred answered, pushing said wand into her hand.

"Thank you."

Hermione eyed the Great Hall, filled with weeping and bleeding people – too many to count. She frowned, distracted for a moment. Why was everyone there?

"You-Know-Who gave Harry an ultimatum, and us one hour to 'tend to our dead and wounded'," he explained with a bitter tone, having read correctly her question on her face.

"I need to go," she immediately chocked out, panic wrapped around her heart like a vine, its tendrils tightening until her heart felt about to implode to relieve the pressure, "I need to…" To find Harry, she didn't finish. To tell him about Ron, to make sure he wasn't about to do something stupidly heroic like sacrifice himself, not about to… Not when Ron was already…

 _(she didn't want to be alone)_

Fred eyed her with sympathy. "Go," he told her. "Do what you need to do, and come back safe. We'll get Ron and," and here his voice shook, his eyes unnaturally bright, "and tell the rest of the family.."

 _('the rest of the family'… How easily he said it, like she still deserved to be called that, to be considered one of them, now that Ron is dead, now that she just stood by and did nothing but watch him fall… How can they call her family when she failed the one time her success mattered the most? How can they even bear to look at her?)_

Her eyes softened. "Thank you." Good luck, she didn't say, because this wasn't the kind of thing you could wish luck for.

Fred smiled, a broken, trembling shadow of a thing, but for a moment Hermione glimpsed the boy he had been, less a year ago, back when this war hadn't seemed so desperate. It gave her hope, that maybe when this ended, they wouldn't have lost everything.

With one last look to the two Weasleys there, biting back the urge to ask if she could help them dig for Ron's body, she left.

 **.x.**

The corridors were empty. In some places, they even looked the way they always had, accentuation the surreal feeling Hermione had that this was just a bad dream.

 _(but then, hadn't this entire year been the same way? An unending nightmares only punctuated by brief moments of happiness, stolen amidst the tragedies?)_

It felt like any moment now, a lost first year would wander in, asking for directions back to their Common Rooms.

Ron would be by her side, lightly jesting with the kids until they were at ease, and when they'd have left, he'd have turned to her, the way he always did, laughing. "I swear we weren't this bad at their age," he'd swear, and she'd answer that they'd actually been worse, or didn't he remember Fluffy?

Her hand reached for his, only to flutter once, twice, and then dropping back by her side, empty.

She quickened her steps, her eyes stinging. It was so easy to forget, if but for a single moment, to fool herself into thinking that maybe the last hour hadn't happened, that if she turned right there, Ron would be there waiting for her.

He wasn't. Instead Harry was.

He looked defeated – worse than he had been after Sirius had died. He had been angry then, and then determined to bring Voldemort down. But now, with the dark circles under his eyes and his pale skin streaked with ash and dirt making him look more dead than alive, he only seemed resolved.

 _(he looked young too, so young for this burden to fall on his shoulders, and it struck her all over again, how young they all were here, most of them children still or not even out of their teens – when they'd dig through the rubble, how many bodies would be children's? How many would be Death Eaters, would be adults? Too many. Not enough…)_

"No," she gasped. "Harry, you _can't_."

Turning toward her, the Cloak hanging from his fingers, Harry didn't even have the grace to look guilty. Instead he just smiled softly, bittersweet.

"I have to," he explained.

"You don't have to do anything! You don't owe anyone anything, let alone your life," she cried out, the words suddenly bursting out of her, "and there isn't anything in this entire world that'd be worth your life in exchange. Do you really think You- that Voldemort will leave us alone if you surrender yourself, that he'd ever keep his word? Come one Harry, you know we can defeat him! Don't you trust us?"

By the end of her tirade, she had tears in her eyes that she blinked rapidly away, and her cheeks had reddened in anger, but Harry only looked more tired.

"I _know_ that," he said. "That's why I'm going, because I know that you'll be able to finish this one I'm gone-"

"Once you're dead, you mean? Merlin, you and Ron, leaving me alone, I-" she choked out, her throat too tight to continue.

"Ron's…?" For a moment, Harry looked devastated, and then his face smoothed out, back to that terrible, tired stillness.

"Yeah," Hermione answered, suddenly exhausted herself. "So please, don't leave me too."

"I _can't_. Merlin Hermione, do you think I want to do this, that I want to go out there? I'd give anything for there to be any other choice, but there isn't. I have to do this," he pleaded, his eyes full of pain and pity, and when his hand rubbed against the inflamed scar on his forehead, she understood what he meant in a horrifying flash of clarity.

"Oh _Harry_ ," she sobbed, flinging herself into his arms. "I'm so sorry."

"I know," he breathed against her hair, his arms almost painfully tight around her. "I know. I'm sorry too. So sorry."

He released her and took a step back. "I need to go," he said, his voice tight.

"Let me walk with you. You shouldn't- you shouldn't be alone."

Harry frowned. "Hermione no, you should go back to the Great Hall, be with everyone, I can't put you in danger…"

"I think I remember telling you more than once that my choices are my own," Hermione replied, her eyes flashing. "Please," she added, her tone softening. "Just to the doors?"

Harry sighed. "To the doors then, and then you go back," he agreed, his disapproving tone negated by his relieved face.

They walked in silence, the moment oddly peaceful, until they reached the large entrance. Harry shrugged on the Cloak, and vanished.

A moment later, Hermione turned around, and headed back inside.

 _("You were always the best of us," were Harry's last words to her before he left for that Forest, and she'll forever be thankful for whatever miracle brought him back, even as she wishes the same miracle could have been applied to Ron – this way, she'll get the chance to prove Harry wrong)_

 _(she was never the best of them)_

 **.x.**

The first Weasley to notice her was Ginny. The redhead took one look at her face and blanched.

Hermione was sure her friend would have fallen had she not already been on the ground, sitting by Ron's body, crying.

Ron looked almost fine. There was some blood at the corner of his mouth, and soot on his face, but apart from that, one could have easily mistaken him from sleeping, or at least at first glance.

When one looked more closely, they would notice that his chest was too thin and unmoving – something had caved it in.

Hermione let herself fall beside the body, her knees hitting the cold stone hard. She gripped Ron's hand tight.

It was cold. Hard too, where before he had always been soft and warm. Something inside her raged, a kind of sad anger – suddenly she understood how Harry could always sacrifice himself for them, how people could think 'take me instead' and mean it, even as they knew it wouldn't help, because surely any sacrifice would be worth not having the be the one left behind, alone and empty.

Surely anything would be better than this.

Someone approached her. It was Mrs. Weasley, her presence warm and welcoming in the midst of this cold, death-filled place.

"He loved you very much, our Ron," she said, aiming for comforting, but falling slightly short, her voice too tight, her eyes too red.

"I know," Hermione replied with a sad smile, "I love-loved him too." And then she burst into tears; big, ugly sobs that wrecked her entire body until she found herself wrapped in Mrs. Weasley's tight embrace.

After what felt like forever, the sobs slowed down and Hermione could think again. She stepped back, wiping her face quickly against her sleeve.

"I- Thank you-" I needed that, she meant to say, but Ginny's urgent words interrupted her.

"Hermione… What about-what about Harry?"

It was obvious from her tone that Ginny already knew what Hermione was about to say.

"He went, didn't he?" Mrs. Weasley stated, her voice pained.

Wordless, Hermione nodded.

"He can't have," Ginny started babbling, "he said he'd stay safe, he said he wouldn't do anything stupid, that he'd see me again."

Hermione grabbed her hands. "I know. I know. But trust me when I say that he didn't have a choice in this."

"It's not fair," Ginny mumbled, letting herself fall against Hermione's chest. "He said he'd see me again," she repeated, like saying it out loud would make it true.

They all stayed there, silent and unmoving, until they were summoned outside.

White-hot anger flooding her veins, Hermione gripped her wand tight and started walking. She would make these Death Eaters regret ever even _thinking_ about attacking the people she held dear.

That was a promise.

 **.x.**

After – after the Final Battle, where Harry came back to life and killed Voldemort, after Ron's burial, after all that - Hermione went to Australia to check on her parents. She couldn't get there fast enough, couldn't flee Britain and the memories there fast enough.

 _(her parents will never remember her, never even realize that they've ever had a daughter they once loved enough to let walk into a world where they couldn't follow – but they're happy there, they lead good lives)_

 _(that has to be enough)_

Two days after she came back, she found Fred in the Leaky Cauldron, nursing a glass of some sparkling green drink she's sure contains more alcohol than she's ingested in an entire year.

She hadn't intended to approach him – she was just passing through, re-entering the magical world to shop for some ingredients she needed for the Dreamless Sleep potion.

Something about the look in his eyes drew her attention though.

She knew that look – she saw it in the mirror every time she cared to look. It was the look you got when something precious inside you broke.

She guessed a lot of people would share that pain after this last war, and the Weasleys had lost their fair share of precious people.

"Any reason you're here instead of in your shop?" She opened with, taking the seat across from Fred.

"Hermione?" He said, startled. "Since when have you been back in England?"

"Not long," she answered in a vague tone, "and don't avoid the question. What's going on?"

 _(it hurt, looking at those red hair and not seeing the face she had loved most beneath them, but it was a different pain than it had been weeks ago, before she had left for Australia, the wound still fresh and bleeding – it gives her hope that she may heal, in time)_

"I'm on my break," Fred replied, half-scowling into his drink. "Everything's fine."

"Right…" She drawled, arching an eyebrow. "And that's why you're drinking, at what? Barely two in the afternoon?"

To her surprise, Fred let out a bark of laughter, loud and only slightly bittersweet. "Merlin, you can really be kind of a mother hen, can't you?"

Despite his words, Fred sounded fond, and suddenly Hermione knew where he had heard that description of her personality.

"I miss him too, you know," she admitted, her voice soft.

"Yeah," Fred agreed quietly, gulping down another mouthful of the green liquid. "Yeah, I know."

They sat in silence there for a while, before Hermione finally ordered a drink and joined Fred in his drinking.

Shopping could wait another day.

 **.x.**

They kept meeting after that, sometimes in the Leaky Cauldron still, silent companionship and alcoholic drinks enough to fill hours of their time, and others elsewhere.

Other bars, some Muggle, which she introduced Fred to – he was bewildered at having to wait for the drinks to be served by an actual person at first but he got used to it quickly enough after the third time the waitress flirted with him – and some magical, which Fred led her to, and where it was her turn to be amazed at the floating drinks, their mesmerizing flights controlled by a waiter, if he could even be called that anymore, who used his wand in way reminiscent of a bandmaster.

Of course, they didn't always end up in bars. Sometimes, they just wandered around in Diagon Alley. Once, Hermione spent an entire day in the twins' shop, playing shopgirl, and later that week they spent their entire Sunday tasting the new menu at Florean's Fortescue Ice Cream shop.

Hermione insisted on sugar-free flavors as a kind of homage for the parents she'd never see again, at least not as _her parents_ , while Fred gorged himself on all the oddest flavors he could find.

George, tagging along for once, took one look at them, Hermione almost laughing, her eyes brighter than he had seen them since Ron died, and Fred, finally looking like he wasn't drowning in grief and guilt anymore, and excused himself, a relieved smile dancing on his lips.

It was nice, having someone there who understood the guilt and didn't judge, didn't try to make you feel better with empty platitudes like 'you should be proud of him' or 'he died a hero' and 'we'll always remember him'.

She didn't want to remember. She wanted to forget.

She wanted to make it so none of this had ever happened, so that she had never fallen in love, never gotten her heart broken, never lost…

 _(she wanted him back – she missed him like she imagined a beached whale must miss the sea: with every fiber of her being, every atom of her body yearning for his to be back by her side)_

She wanted the pain to end, she confessed once over drinks shared at twilight. She wanted… She wanted things she could never get.

 _["I should know better," she said bitterly. "Everyone always says that I'm the smart one, the brilliant one, but I'm terrible with this. I can't stop missing him, I can't stop thinking that I should have, that I could have-"_

" _Saved him?"_

 _Hermione let out a startled laugh, the sound rough and sour. "Yeah. I was there, just beside him! How could I have let this happen, how could I have not found a better way, a way to save him? I just… I don't understand."_

" _I know the feeling. He saved me – my little brother, the hero, selflessly sacrificing his life. And everyone acts like they're so proud, like what he did was so good and right, like he's this example to follow, but he was my little brother, and he died for me, and that's just – that's just not right. Merlin, I'd rather have him back than have him a hero."_

" _But we can't."_

" _No, we can't."]_

Harry understood – he too had lost Ron, he too had lost people – but he was so busy now, with helping take care of Teddy and the relationship he was trying to re-build with Ginny, and for the first time in possibly, well, ever, it seemed like Harry was the well-adjusted one.

 _["Just because I've lost more people doesn't make your grief any less painful, or any less valid" Harry told her, his eyes full of pity, the first time she saw him after her return and promptly admitted to avoiding him because she felt like a fraud next to him. "What you and Ron shared was different to what he and I had – that doesn't mean I miss him any less, just that I miss him differently."_

" _When did you become the wise one?" Hermione laughed, tears in her voice._

" _Hey, I've always been the wise one," Harry joked back, and there, for an instant, it seemed like things were back to the way they were, before everything went so wrong._

 _But Ron wasn't there, and she could see the moment Harry sobered up, remembering that too._

" _Just what do feels right for you, okay? I swear we'll all be waiting for you."]_

With Fred, things felt more… natural. Like she could be herself, rage if she wanted to, cry if she needed to. It was freeing, and she came to enjoy their time together, perhaps more than she should, and definitely not only as a way to grieve.

She would miss him once she went back to Hogwarts – though they both knew enough secret passageways in and out of the castle to visit each other if they wanted to.

 _(surprisingly – or perhaps, unsurprisingly enough, she knew she would)_

 **.x.**

They kissed for the first time at Christmas, their hands sticky with sugar, caught under mistletoe by a laughing George, feeling like the teenagers they no longer were.

It felt like coming home, and underneath the chocolate taste lingering on Fred's lips, Hermione tasted hope.


End file.
